Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) (52 page)

Phil took out four arrows, leaving four more in the quiver. He
handed one arrow to each of them as if they were sacred relics, and they
received them in kind. When Bailey kissed hers with her eyes squished tight,
Seseidi did the same.

Phil vaulted over the bundle to work the far side. He chose a
strand near the top, placed the wired-on tip against it lightly, then raised
the shaft up to get a good angle on the plunge. He gripped the shaft with both
hands. Mary crossed her fingers and held them up for him to see.

He jabbed down hard and buried the tip.

They waited for something to happen.

Nothing did.

“Do yours,” Phil said to Mary.

Mary picked a strand, put the tip on it and plunged down. When the
tip was buried, she rocked the shaft to make even better contact. The point where
the tip went in leaked liquid. That was a good sign since it meant the fluid
would likely dissolve the dried poison off the tip.

They waited.

Nothing.

“Go,” he said to Bailey.

Bailey picked one down next to the floor, squatted and jabbed hers
in. Then she kicked the bundle for good measure. “Die!” she said.

Phil nodded to Seseidi who yammered and plunged at a convenient
strand. He pumped on the shaft with both arms until the very shaft of the
arrow followed the tip deep into the slit it made.

They waited.

They looked at each other and waited. Mary crossed the fingers of
both hands, closed her eyes tight and pressed them to her temples.

Bailey kicked it again. “Die, I said!”

Phil gestured with his hand for more arrows, and Seseidi gave one
more each to Phil and Bailey. When Phil wagged his hand for him to hand over
the other two, Seseidi shook his head.

Probably
a good idea,
Phil
thought
. Keep some in reserve.

Bailey and Phil picked strands at random and plunged them in.
Bailey grunted like a ninja when she did hers.

With the arrows sticking out of the bundle like matador’s picks,
they waited. Mary continued to press her crossed fingers to her head, her eyes
pinched tight, wishing hard.

They waited, and Bailey started to cry like a frustrated baby. She
kicked it again. “Die! you . . . you . . . die! You just die!”

Seseidi yammered softly and sat down with his legs crossed.

Well,
Phil thought solemnly
. It wasn’t like they ever really had a chance. This is an alien animal
modified for space travel after all. The idea of using a few milligrams of
frog poison to defeat it is pretty lame.

He licked and sucked his lips and weighed the only option.

His eyes drifted from Mary who hadn’t moved, to Bailey, then to
the remaining arrows in the quiver. Just two left.

Then to the woven basket.

His hand felt for his belt buckle.

He could strangle the Indian then use the remaining two arrows on
the women. After that he’d physically destroy the brains of all three so they
couldn’t possibly be reanimated. He wouldn’t like doing it. Doing himself
wouldn’t be a problem; he’d just put one of the frogs in his mouth, chomp down
a few times and swallow. That would do better than any manufactured drug and
all that poison would probably prevent any future recall of his own
consciousness as well.

He hoped the Indian would go peacefully, he looked like a tough
little monkey.

When Mary opened her eyes, she saw Phil standing on the other side
of the bundle with a frozen look. She read his mind; and when she saw his hand
on his belt, she forced herself to smile, then closed her eyes and nodded her
head slowly. Somewhere, she heard Bailey’s soft crying, and she reached out as
if blind and drew Bailey close to her, holding her head against her own.

A soft movement of air went over them like a sigh and brushed
against Mary’s face like a caress as it passed. Her eyes popped open.

“What was that?”

“The wind,” Phil said lifting his head to sense it.

“I’ve been here for months. There is no wind. Something’s
happening.”

The next gust of air was stronger and was accompanied by a distant
sound like a roar coming from the forward section of the ship.

“Now that was promising,” Phil said. He reached over and wiggled
one of the arrows, jabbing it in a little more with his palm on the end.

The nail of Bailey’s forefinger found her mouth, and she grinned
against it. “Die,” she said under her breath.

There was a low-pitched sound that started low and distant, then
grew louder and louder like an approaching freight train. The air began to move
steadily past them as the sound grew, just rippling hair and shirts at first.

The sudden blast of air from the rear of the ship hit them like
something solid and tore violently at them. Mary tightened her grip on Bailey
and forced her to the floor. They all grabbed at the strands on the bundle.

Bailey
was ecstatic. “We did it!”
she yelled over the sound. “
We did it! We killed it! We fucked it!”

Phil wasn’t so sure, but the sudden evacuation of air could only mean
that the ship’s hull had been breached in some way, but maybe not from any
action of theirs. For all they knew, this could be a normal, scheduled event
they just hadn’t seen before.
 
His guts,
however, told him Bailey was right, and he grinned like a kid.

Mary clawed her way up and leaned over the bundle, clutching it
tight to keep herself oriented. “Phil! We’ve done it!” she yelled. “We could
still get away! We could still get out!”

Phil was crouching against the wind, his hair mashed flat by the
almost solid wall of air. He looked down the tube to the end where it
terminated as just a speck of light in the distance. The shuttle bay was there.
He felt his shirt pocket and discovered that he still had the envelope with
the copper wire straws in it.

Mary was right. With any luck, they’d done their absolute worst.
It was the perfect hit. They’d caused some unknown, massive seam to open
unexpectedly. The ship hadn’t exploded or all the tubes hadn’t convulsed and
clamped shut on the occupants. There was nothing more to do—nothing to do but
get out alive.

“Go!”
he
yelled.

They pressed against the wind, and moved bent forward toward the
shuttle bay.

They’d only gone about a hundred yards when something stung Phil’s
forehead. He nearly panicked when it hit but he reached up and felt only a
stinging welt, not an alien burr. He was looking down as much as possible,
trying to keep his eyes out of the searing wind. He saw just a couple at first,
then dozens whizzing by his feet and smacking into his shoes and shins. Soon
the objects were flying by like hail going sideways, smacking his thighs, face
and the top of his lowered head. He heard Mary and Bailey crying out in
high-pitched peels as the objects smacked into them. Bare-chested, Seseidi was
taking the worst of it. Phil wasn’t sure what the objects were until he saw the
first oval canister roll past at about forty miles per hour, then he laughed
out loud and didn’t give a shit if the damn things killed him.

The flying objects were wasp larvae.

The escaping air must have ripped through the storerooms, carrying
canisters with it, breaking them open. The group tumbled and raced for an
unseen exit somewhere forward.

Phil stopped, turned around in the wind, held his arms out and let
the pupae pelt him.

“It’s the
larve!” he bellowed. “Fuck ‘em! Fuck ‘em all!”

Mary and Bailey whooped with joy and swished at the flying pupae
with their hands. Bailey jumped up and down in the maelstrom, barely keeping
her balance in the wind.
“We
fucked it up good! Really good!”
she
yelled.

The side tubes seemed to be the source of the escaping air, not
the main tube itself. Each time they passed an opening, the pressure from it
forced them into the nerve bundle. Phil looked ahead and could see the source
of the brown hail. It was streaming in from the side tubes, sliding neatly
like blowing sand along the cove of the openings. As the objects came into the
main tube, the wind tumbled them, raised them up and made them airborne. The
stream was getting heavier by the second. The first canisters—and ragged shards
of canisters—rolled into the tube, tumbled, then became missiles, bouncing and
blonging
down the
tube at them. Like the pupae, just a few at first then ten, then a hundred from
each side. Most were staying just a few feet off the floor, but not all. The
first one flew past him at head level. He looked around to find some sheltering
depression, but the walls of this section of the tube were smooth.

“Get off the floor!” Mary yelled. “Hurry! Cover your head!”

He jumped up on the bundle and lying facing forward, covered his
head with his arms. The others took his lead and did the same. Mary looked and
saw the canisters and pieces flying and tumbling toward them like a cloud of
metal footballs. She buried her face in her arms and felt every muscle in her
body tighten.

Phil could hear the canisters
whooshing
past in
fast succession, clanging hollow off each other. Then one whacked his hand
sending a pulse of pain up his arm and making him groan. The next one glanced
off his elbow with a sound of an empty bottle hitting wood. He tried to make
himself a smaller target by tightening the grip on his head. At least he was
protecting the others from the brunt of the onslaught.

The pupae were flying past now by the millions, mixed in with the
canisters, peppering his hands and arms, hissing by like hard snow. He wondered
how many of them had been grown on his flesh. They were hateful things, painful
in birth, painful in life and, now, even painful in death. He hoped that the
inert little fuckers had enough awareness in them to feel the pain when the
vacuum of space split their asses right open.

A canister or piece of one
plonked
off his
head in the space between his hands causing a flash of light in his head. He
grimaced.

The maelstrom finally slowed to just an occasional
whirr
and
whoosh
of a
canister and a smack now and then from a flying pupae. Phil raised his head
into the wind and saw that the air ahead was relatively free of the flying
missiles. He looked at his hands and arms and winced at the welts and deep
contusions on them. He felt at the lump on his head and his fingertips came
away red with blood. Bailey was at his feet, still hunkered down and the Indian
was nursing a nasty cut on his arm. Mary was looking back at him, squinting
against the wind, her hair streaking straight back. Everyone was still intact.

“It’s clear enough!” he yelled over the wind. “Move!”

They dismounted the nerve bundle and trotted off, leaning into
the wind with each thrust of their legs, the wind pulling at their clothes.

It took a good ten minutes to cover the distance from where they
started to the shuttle bay. The wind seemed to get weaker as they approached
the end of the ship, and Phil wondered if it was because they were farther
from the opening or because the air was getting thinner. They were exhausted
and thankful that the air near the shuttle bay was moving more like a breeze
than a hurricane.

They were no more than one hundred feet from the opening when
Seseidi, now far in the lead, stopped, then crouched and crabbed his way back
to them. When he reached the others, he pushed them back into a depression in
the wall of the tube, yammering urgently.

Phil leaned out around the edge of the tube wall and was able to
see the movements of at least two goons in the shuttle bay. They were carrying
enormous net bags full of alien stuff toward the shuttles in the air lock.
Beyond them, he could see the rat-like movements of dozens of aliens,
clamoring, scurrying.

He’d expected as much.

“What’s are they doing?” Bailey whispered.

“Abandoning ship. They’re taking what they can and loading it into
the shuttles.”